


Raising Hell (Drops of Heaven)

by Crystalshard



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Aziraphale and Crowley raise Warlock, Found Family, Gen, Hastur and Ligur are weird uncles who do not know how to deal with kids, M/M, Parents Aziraphale and Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-09-01 00:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20249077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalshard/pseuds/Crystalshard
Summary: When Warlock's parents die, Aziraphale and Crowley step in to raise the kid on their own.It takes several childhood incidents, a birthday party, and a near-Apocalypse before Warlock finds out exactly what his fathers are.(They're a family. He knew that all along.)





	Raising Hell (Drops of Heaven)

Warlock, so his fathers tell him, was six months old when it happened. 

He'd been left behind in Nanny's arms, tiny and squalling and far too young to be taken on an aeroplane, when his original parents had been sent on a last-minute diplomatic trip. Something had happened - his fathers either don't know what it was, or they're just not saying - and then Warlock was an orphan. 

Technically, Warlock finds out later, he should have gone to live with his dad's sister Aunt Gemma. But Dad and Papa pulled some strings, and Aunt Gemma was too busy with her country club and her fashionable skiing trips to want a small child tagging after her, so his fathers were named his guardians. 

At three years old, Warlock is a curious child who is always getting into things he shouldn't. (Dad is generally pleased about this, except when it's something that could harm him, and then Dad's snake eyes go narrow and his face looks like an oncoming storm.) Warlock has quickly learned to stay away from the cupboard under the sink, the liquor cabinet, and the electrical sockets, because otherwise Papa gets this disappointed look on his face that's worse than Dad's displeasure. 

On sunny days, the three of them go to the park. (Warlock hasn't yet figured out that living in a cottage in the South Downs which has doors that link through to an old London bookshop and an expensive London apartment is unusual.) 

Papa gets them all ice cream, which he says is a blessing because it brings joy and which Dad says is a sin because it's encouraging greed. Warlock has long since decided that ice cream is delicious and that he doesn't care whether it's good or bad. His fathers sit on a park bench to eat theirs. 

"Dad?" Warlock asks. A drip of vanilla slides its way onto his fingers, and Warlock licks at it enthusiastically. In the way of small boys everywhere, he manages to get ice cream on his cheek as he does so.

"Yes, Warlock dear?" Dad's accent sometimes slips into another one if he's not careful, and Warlock secretly enjoys the soft burr because it's _just for him._ Even Papa doesn't get the Dad voice. "Hold still, let me get that." And a black cotton handkerchief swipes up the sticky ice cream that's slowly melting on Warlock's face.

Warlock holds still only long enough to let Dad clean him up, then takes another bite of his soft-serve. "Can we play sink the duck?"

"Not today, my little hellspawn. The mama ducks all have little ducklings, and your papa would be sad if we sank one with babies." 

Warlock doesn't understand why that's a problem - the ducks never stay sunk, after all - but he doesn't want to make Papa give him the Disappointed Look. "Oh. Okay." 

Dad and Papa exchange a glance, and then Papa suggests, "Why don't you go watch the ducklings with their mothers? That should be fine, as long as you give the mother ducks enough space. They're very protective of their babies. As protective as we are about you, dear child." 

Warlock brightens. "Okay!" 

He toddles off after the ducklings, crunching at the softening cone he's holding, and two pairs of loving eyes watch him go. 

* * *

Warlock wanders further than he means to. He knows he shouldn't get out of sight of Dad and Papa, because unspecified Bad Things might happen, but the duck is waddling away at top speed and all the ducklings are trotting along in a little line after her. So Warlock follows across the grass of St. James's Park like a little duckling himself, behind the trees and the bushes, and watches with wondering eyes as the mama duck finds a suitably gentle incline and leads the little yellow balls of fluff into the lake. 

When the last one has paddled furiously away, Warlock turns to look at the area around him. He's not sure where he is, but the park isn't that big, and he's sure he can find his way back to his fathers. 

There's a tall man in a grey suit standing nearby, looking straight at Warlock. Nothing in Warlock's life has taught him fear yet, so he's only surprised when the man is suddenly nearby and bends down to grab his arm. "Are you him?" the Man In Grey asks, his tone just shy of a demand.

Who else would he be? Warlock wonders, before he remembers what his fathers taught him to do if he's approached by strange people he doesn't know. "Let go of me or - or I'll yell! Papa says there's lots of people here who will hear me, and that even Londoners will do something about a kid being bothered!" Warlock tries to pull his arm away, but the man's grip is as strong as iron. 

The man's face twists, his peculiar amethyst eyes narrowing as he reluctantly releases Warlock's arm. "You listen to me, you little brat," he says flatly. "Your 'papa' answers to me, so you're going to tell me what I want to know or . . ." 

"Is there a problem?" drawls a new voice.

Purple Eyes backs away a couple of steps as a black man with a lizard on his head strolls up. Beside him is a slightly shorter man with corpse-white skin, entirely black eyes, and a frog on his head. He smells bad, like the farm down the road at muck-spreading time. 

"Hastur. Ligur," Purple Eyes says dismissively. 

"That's _Duke_ Hastur to you, Gabriel," Smelly Frog Head says. He's smoking a cigarette, which Papa is against on principle. Dad says people make their own choices, and if they want to poison themselves then so be it. 

"This is really none of your business, _Duke_ Hastur," Gabriel says with a mocking lift of his eyebrows. "Or is asking a few questions suddenly a sin?" 

"Wasn't it always?" Ligur asks, the lizard on his head shading to red and his eyes following suit. "Also, if you're trying to _question_ our Master's son, I think it's very definitely our problem." 

Hastur smiles. It's not a good smile, but more like the one Dad uses when he talks about the people he works with. "Can't interfere with the Great Plan, can you, wa - uh, worm-wings? Where's that bit written again?" 

"Right. Fine," Gabriel says, his voice attempting to be pleasant but just ending up at frustrated. "Don't forget we'll be keeping an eye on you. Non-interference goes both ways." 

"Of _course,_" Ligur purrs, all insincere venom and flashing eyes. 

Gabriel huffs, then turns on his heel and stalks away. Warlock tries to keep one eye on him and one on the weird duo, but all that gives him is a headache. Fortunately for his newly-found caution, Hastur and Ligur stay where they are with no attempt to approach. 

"So. Ah. Little boy," Hastur starts, discomfort written in big, child-friendly letters all over his face. "How are you? Killed anything today?" 

"Papa says that all creatures are brother and sister to us, and we shouldn't hurt them because we should use our power to protect things weaker than us. Even slugs." Warlock makes a face, because slugs are slimy and icky and he doesn't like them. "Dad says that some creatures are pests and should be disposed of." 

He's seen Dad with his garden and his plants and a tub full of slug pellets, which he has been sternly instructed Not to Eat. ("Think about it, Warlock. If these can kill slugs, imagine what they'd do to you." Warlock might not be Crowley's child by blood, but he'd definitely inherited his Dad's excellent imagination.) 

"Well, then, listen to your dad." Ligur gives him an awkward, mis-timed wink. "Maybe we'll see you later." 

Warlock isn't sure how to respond to that vaguely ominous statement, but then he hears his dad's voice. "Warlock? Warlock, where are you?" 

"Here, Dad!" Warlock calls back, taking his eyes off the duo for a moment. They shouldn't have been able to vanish in that brief second of inattention, but when Warlock looks around, they're gone. 

Dad appears around a tree at a run, and he doesn't slow down until he's scooped his slightly sticky child back into his arms. "Warlock, you know you're not supposed to leave our sight," he scolds gently. "Your papa was really worried about you, you know." 

"I'm sorry, Dad." Warlock gives his dad the wobbly-lipped look that he's found works best for getting out of trouble. 

Dad sighs and tucks him against his shoulder. "I'm not mad, kiddo," he said gently. "But I don't know what I'd have done if something had happened to you." 

"It's okay, Duke Hastur and Ligur rescued me," Warlock assures his dad. This doesn't seem to be as helpful as Warlock had meant it to be, since Dad tenses and yells, "Aziraphale! I need you over here, right now!" 

Warlock's back is to his papa, so he doesn't see him arrive, but Papa turns up almost as quickly as if he had teleported into the little area by the lake. "Crowley? What on Earth is the matter?" 

"Hastur and Ligur were here, angel," Dad says tightly. 

"Oh. Oh dear." 

"It's okay," Warlock assures his fathers. "They didn't come anywhere near me, and Gabriel had already let me go when they turned up." 

_"Gabriel?"_

Warlock has rarely heard Papa as astonished as that. 

"I think we'd better hear the whole story," Dad says with steel in his voice. 

* * * 

When Warlock is four, Papa leaves him alone in the bookshop for five minutes. 

in theory, this should have been survivable. Aziraphale hasn't actually left the shop, he's just around the stacks dealing with a customer who thinks she wants to buy something. Warlock has crayons and a colouring book and a couple of dinosaur toys in case he gets bored, and he's been peacefully scribbling away for the last half hour. There's no earthly reason why he should suddenly change his mind. 

Unfortunately for Warlock's not-quite-human papa, Warlock is a four-year-old human boy with all the attention span and the instincts for interesting things that goes with it. 

Slipping off the little stool by the low table, crayon in hand, Warlock trots across to Papa's desk and climbs up on his chair. Papa always has things on his desk, from interesting things (stinky binding glue and feather quills and enormous magnifying glasses) to boring things (books full of tiny words that don't look like proper English and don't have pictures). This time, it's a sheet that doesn't have words on at all, but just little pictures of birds and eyes and wiggly lines that repeat in no pattern he can see. They're boring pictures though, no colours anywhere on the page. 

Warlock sets about amending this. 

* * *

". . .don't know what she was thinking, confusing John Donne and _Lorna Doone_ like that . . . Oh!" 

Warlock turns around with a happy smile for his father. "Papa! Look, I made the pictures all pretty." 

Papa looks more shocked than pleased, and Warlock's face drops. Then Papa takes a breath. "Yes, I can see, they're all very colourful. Come here, dear one." 

Papa lifts Warlock down out of the chair, even though Warlock could have got down by himself, and then Papa kneels next to him. Warlock sees the seriousness in Papa's eyes and doesn't say anything. 

"Warlock, my little angel, I know you were just trying to make the pictures look better, like you do with your colouring book. But sometimes I have things on this desk that are very delicate, and might not do well with crayon. I won't always be able to tell you what those things are, so Papa's desk is going to be off limits from now on, okay?" 

"Like the cupboard with the bottles in and the cupboard under the sink?" Warlock asks. 

"Exactly so, dear child," Papa agrees. "Now, come here, and I'll show you how to take the crayon off the hieroglyphics." 

"What's a herogliffic?" 

Papa smiles as he passes Warlock a soft cloth. "Hieroglyphics are a special alphabet from Ancient Egypt, they're words made up out of pictures. Here, wipe this gently over the scroll, and be careful not to wrinkle it." 

Under Warlock's inexpert guidance, the crayon transfers itself smoothly from the papyrus to the cloth. Soon, the scroll is as clean as it was before Warlock touched it. 

(Three days later, when Warlock decides he doesn't like the yellow of the beach ball he's just coloured in, he tries to wipe it off using his sleeve. All he gets for his efforts is a yellow sleeve and a smudgy picture.)

* * *

Warlock is seven when he sees Hastur and Ligur again. 

This time, they're sitting on the low wall that serves as a boundary to the little country school he attends. Both Hastur and Ligur are smoking this time, and somehow none of his teachers have moved to chase them away. 

Weird men that he barely remembers are nowhere near as compelling as a good game of tag, however, and he doesn't pay them any attention during morning break. By the time his class are let out onto the playground again after lunch, they've gone, leaving behind a Swiss Army knife and a lingering smell of cigarette smoke. 

Warlock doesn't mention them to Dad when he comes to pick him up from school in the Bentley. Nor does he mention the knife in his pocket. 

(Crowley has, somewhat to his bemusement, been adopted into the local village chapter of the Classic Car Enthusiasts group. The cars belonging to his fellow enthusiasts have become miraculously low-maintenance.) 

* * *

When Warlock - or Lock, as his friends now call him - is ten, he overhears his fathers debating whether to send him to the local secondary school, or whether to send him to the posh private school down the road. 

Well. It's his future, he thinks he should have a say in it too. "I'd really rather go to the local one, Papa," Lock says as he walks into the room. "My friends are all going there too, except Melissa who's going to the girls' school." 

"We'd be nearby when - you know - _it_ comes," Dad says in a low voice that still isn't quiet enough for Lock to avoid hearing. 

Papa sighs. "I suppose it's decided, then. The local secondary school it is." 

Lock whoops and hugs Papa. Then he hugs Dad as well, just so he doesn't feel left out. 

This isn't the first time that Dad and Papa have hinted that _something_ is going to happen when he turns eleven. He's a bit worried that he might be going to Hogwarts, because what else would come on his eleventh birthday except an owl delivering his letter? He's almost convinced his fathers are magic, because he knows now that ducks don't just bob back up after a good sinking, and he's sure that the dove from Papa's terrible magic act had been dead before it suddenly perked up and chirped. And what about the crayon incident from when he was four, where Papa must have used magic to clean the scroll? And Dad can talk to snakes, too, because he remembers Dad hissing at a grass snake one day in the bottom of the garden. 

* * *

Lock turns eleven, and his fathers throw him a party. He'd managed to talk Papa out of his magic act, and instead they've stuck with balloons and cake and games in the garden for him and all his friends. 

"Cake time!" Papa calls at two minutes to three, and all of Lock's friends run off into the cottage. It's Lock's favourite, lemon drizzle cake with chocolate buttercream in the middle, but he hesitates because there are two men standing at the garden gate with a big red balloon and really weird smiles. 

Reluctantly, Warlock gets close enough to ask, "Who are you?" 

"The boy doesn't remember us, Ligur," says the one with a frog on his head. 

"Oh. That's a shame, Hastur," says the one with the enormous green chameleon. 

Something tingles in the back of Warlock's memory. The frog, the chameleon, Hastur and Ligur, the smell of sewage and dung and old stagnant ponds. A man with purple eyes and a grip on his arm. 

"You're the men from when I was a kid," Lock says, inching closer. "Near the duck pond. And you left me that knife."

The happy smile looks utterly wrong on Hastur's face, and the high-pitched giggle is even more so. "Haha! See, Ligur, he does remember us!" 

"You said that my dad was your master, but he sounded like he didn't like you." Dad's never mentioned the two strange men again, but the memory is coming back rapidly. 

"Well," Ligur said, without offering an explanation. 

"Oh! We brought you a present!" Hastur says, and he shoves the hand holding the string of the balloon towards Lock. Lock eyes the balloon dubiously. Now he's closer, he can see the two red devil-horns protruding from the top of it. On its round face, someone has scrawled, 'HaPPy <strike>aPOCaLypsE</strike> biRthdAY wArlOCK' in black marker pen. 

Reluctantly, Lock reaches out to take it, because after all, it's a present, and he should be polite to people. (It pisses them off more if they're being nasty to you, Dad says.) "Thank you," he says slowly. 

"Don't thank us," Ligur growls. 

"And don't forget to name the dog when it turns up!" Hastur says with disturbing enthusiasm. 

Lock glances up at the balloon and frowns. "Wait, my fathers are getting me a dog? I don't even like dogs." 

There's no response, When he looks back down, Hastur and Ligur are gone. 

Lock hides the balloon in his tree house before he goes to claim his slice of cake. 

* * *

Dad and Papa are distracted all the way through blowing out the candles, and cutting the cake, and even through serving slices to the ravenous ten and eleven year olds clustered around the dining room table. 

"It hasn't come," Papa murmurs to Dad, and Dad's lips thin in the way that means Something is going wrong. Then Dad's phone goes off, and he leaves the room to let Papa preside over the birthday meal. 

Dad comes back after a few minutes to tug Papa aside, and try as he might Warlock can only catch a few words. 'Hound' is one of them, and 'not here', and 'Hastur'. Then Papa says something Lock can't hear at all except for the questioning tone, and Dad says 'no' and 'party, then'." 

Warlock's birthday gets back on track, but his fathers' attention still seems to be split.

* * *

When everything winds down, and his friends have been collected by their parents, Lock flops on the sofa to admire the little gardening set Dad bought for him. It went with a book on botany and another on gardening in the English countryside which had been Papa's contributions, and he's already had his nose deep in the glossy pages. 

Dad walks back in from tidying the garden, his phone in his hand and an oddly focused look that Lock can see even behind the dark glasses. "Lock, dear, Papa and I have had a sudden . . . urgent business matter come up. Would you mind staying over at Jamie's tonight? His mother's already said you can go." 

On the one hand, Jamie is Lock's best mate and he's stayed over there before. On the other, it feels like his fathers are trying to get rid of him, like he's an inconvenience to their lives and to whatever's come up. 

Lock abandons the gardening set and the books, and nearly falls off the sofa in his haste to wrap his arms around his dad. Dad drops to his knees as if his legs don't have any bones in them, and hugs him back fiercely. "Lock, love, what's wrong?" 

"Are - are you coming back?" It's not the question Lock meant to ask, but he supposes it will do. 

"Oh, Lock," his dad says, stroking his hair the way he had when Lock was a baby. "Of course we are. Only the end of the world could prevent us getting back to you." 

Lock snuffles against his dad's shoulder, which turns into outright sobbing. Dad lets him cry it out. 

* * * 

The next few days are weird. Dad and Papa come back the next day, as promised, but Papa has a new book and spends all of his time in his bookshop reading it. That's what Dad says, anyway - when Lock tries the bookshop door, he finds that both it and the apartment door are firmly locked. They've never been locked against him before, not even when he was grounded over the milk bottle incident. 

Then Dad sends him off to play at Jamie's again, with instructions to stay there if they're not back to collect him. Dad's scary right now, full of anger and heartbreak and smelling of burned paper, and Lock just nods and gets his stuff. Jamie's mum makes a joke about adopting him as her second son when he arrives, and Lock doesn't have the heart to laugh. 

He watches the burning M25 on the TV at Jamie's house, and he knows that something's wrong. He watches the news report on the peace treaty that somehow failed disastrously, and the one on the nuclear power station that was left with only a lemon sherbet to power it. He watches the re-run of the earlier news item about Atlantis.

(He doesn't see the one about all the nukes nearly setting themselves off, because it doesn't exist. No country in the world is going to admit that they briefly lost control of their nuclear weapons.) 

And then the world _twists_, and suddenly it feel as if something huge has given reality a good shake and turned it inside out. Lock turns to Jamie instead of watching apocalyptic news reports, and asks, "Did you feel that?" 

"Feel what?" Jamie asks, still engrossed in a piece about the kraken going after Japanese whaling ships. "Don't tell me we're getting earthquakes in England, because Miss Honeywell at school said that we're too far from any fault lines to get anything but tiny ones here." 

"Never mind," Lock mutters, hugging one of the sofa cushions to himself and determinedly fixing his eyes on the TV. 

(While Warlock in, in fact, an ordinary human boy, he's been living with Heavenly and Demonic influences all his life. Some kinds of genetics aren't transferred the usual way.) 

* * *

Dad and Papa don't come to fetch Lock until the next day, and Lock waits impatiently while Papa charms Jamie's mum and attempts to pay her for the 'unexpected babysitting'. (She declines the money, but accepts the promise of one of Dad's ginger cakes.) 

Lock barely says goodbye to Jamie, who he'll surely see in the next day or so, and spends the walk back home clinging to Dad and Papa's hands. He's well aware that he's too old for hand-holding, but he can't help it. Given they grips his fathers give him in return, they seem to find the contact as necessary as Lock does. 

Instinctively, they also seem to understand Lock's need for answers. Dad slings Lock's overnight backpack into a corner of the living room as he and Papa sit down with him, still holding his hands. Dad removes his sunglasses as they settle either side of him on the sinfully comfortable three-seater sofa that's cradled a sleeping Lock more than once, and the familiarity and their closeness gives Lock the sense of safety he needs to start asking questions.

"Where did you go?" 

Papa glances at Dad, and Dad holds up a finger as if to say, 'Shhh, I'll take this one.' Papa nods, and Dad takes a deep breath. "We had to - okay, maybe I should have let your papa answer this question, he's better at long stories. No, don't you dare, I'm telling this one," Dad adds as Papa opens his mouth. "So. Ah." 

"Did it have to do with all the magic stuff going on?" Lock asks, a little impatient at his dad's evasions. 

"As a matter of fact, it did."

"And you had to go fix it because you're magic too?" 

Dad's mouth drops open and he looks at Papa with wide eyes. Papa chuckles. "You're very perceptive, Lock, but not quite accurate. I am - er - an angel of the Lord, well, technically a Principality, but never mind, that can wait. And your dad here . . ." 

". . . is a demon," Dad finishes. 

Lock wrinkles his forehead and looks between them. "But you're still my fathers, right?" 

"Absolutely right," Dad agrees, looking rather relieved. 

Papa beams at Lock, joy practically radiating off him. "Of course we are, dear child." 

Lock nods back, too preoccupied to smile, and turns back to his dad. "So . . . you were saying? About fixing things?" 

Dad takes another deep breath, then launches into a story Lock would have dismissed as make-believe a week ago. It's all very well to imagine yourself into a fantasy universe of wizards and witches - it's another thing entirely to learn that witches were once real, about the war between Heaven and Hell, and how that led to Lock and this Adam kid and some other baby being swapped at birth. About the Apocalypse and the Horsemen and how his fathers provided the support Adam needed to choose his own destiny. 

Lock curls into himself, smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter as the story goes on, and only his fathers' hands holding his own prevent him from doing so entirely. 

Eventually, Dad runs out of words. "And then we came home to you, Lock. You were the first thing we wanted to see after the world didn't end." 

"So . . . you're not sending me back to my birth parents? I mean, you intended to raise the Antichrist, and instead you got me. I'm the wrong kid." 

"Warlock, _no_," Papa breathes. "There was never a better accident than the one that brought you to us. "

"Adam chose his adoptive parents over the Devil," Dad continues, "and we would choose you over the devil's son a hundred times over. You're our son, Lock, and that's more important than any genetics." 

"We love you," Papa says softly. "We always will." 

"Always," Dad says.

It's relief, this time, that brings the tears. Lock can't decide which parent to hug first, but they take the decision out of his hands when both of them lean in and wrap their arms around him. There's a fluttering noise, and suddenly the three of them are wrapped in white feathers. 

"Oi, no outdoing me, angel," Dad mutters, and then there's a second set of black feathers that somehow seem to be occupying the same space. 

Lock cries for a couple of minutes, before stopping with a hiccup as he remembers something that starts him giggling. Once he starts, he can't stop. 

"What is it, my little hellspawn?" Dad asks, a smile on his face and in those yellow eyes. The name doesn't sting like Lock would have expected it to. Somehow, it's still just Dad's special nickname for him. 

"I just thought," Lock gasped through the giggles, "that this means I'm not related to Aunt Gemma after all, and I'm so glad!" 

Both of his fathers start laughing. Cocooned in holy and infernal wings, Lock considers the merits of a nap to rest his suddenly tired body. After all, he's only an overwhelmed eleven year old boy, and he's had a very long week.


End file.
